1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed to cutting, engraving, or perforating products by means of relative movement between the product and an optical beam source.
2. Related Art
Current techniques for cutting and perforating flexible products such as latex rubber gloves and garments involve inefficient manual labor operations. For example, perforations can be made by including protrusions on a former and then abrading any dried latex that forms on the protrusions.
Other techniques, such as mechanical piercing, are limited in both their precision, accuracy, and feature size. Furthermore, manual or purely mechanical techniques can be even more difficult and time consuming if the products must first be removed from the formers on which they are made before processing. Thus, an improved method for quickly and precisely cutting, perforating, and engraving flexible products is needed.